Project Sel4, an open micro-oscillation, has been awarded the ACM Software System Award 2022 by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The award recognizes achievements in the mathematical verification of reliability and safety that meet formal language specifications and demonstrate readiness for use in critical applications.
The Sel4 project has demonstrated that it is possible to verify the reliability and safety of industrial operating system projects rigorously, without compromising performance and versatility. This breakthrough was made possible by removing parts of the system that manage nucleus resources into the user space, enabling access to the same resources as user resources.
ACM Software System Award is annually awarded for the development of software systems that make a decisive impact on the industry, disclose new areas of commercial use or introduce new concepts. The prize is worth $35,000, and past winners have included GCC and LLVM projects and their founders Richard Stalman and Chris Latner.
The architecture of Sel4 micro-rewindow does not provide ready-made high-level abstractions for managing files, processes, network connections, etc. Instead, it offers only minimal mechanisms to manage access to physical address space, interruptions, and processor resources. High-level abstractions and drivers for interacting with equipment are realized separately on top of micro-re in the form of user-level tasks. Access of such tasks to resources available to micro-rewinds is organized by setting rules.
The award is a significant milestone for Sel4 and recognizes the significant contribution made by the project to the field of computer systems.